Sheep and Wool

Yesterday, my friend L and I went to the Vermont Sheep and Wool festival. It was quite fun! We got to see alpacas, llamas, angora rabbits, goats, and (of course) many sheep, including ones with curly horns, and little ones bleating pitifully while being shorn. We held some of the bunnies, and took pictures of ourselves.

There were also lots of vendors with every fiber-related product and supply you could think of. It was raining outside, so it got a little steamy-humid inside the convention buildings, but it wasn’t too bad. And there was so much to look at! L and I got to have a little lesson on how to use a spinning wheel, but neither of us had much success. I kept managing to make my wheel turn the wrong way, which tangled my infant yarn all up, and L’s yarn kept breaking. We enjoyed ourselves, though. Then we decided that maybe drop spindles would be easier to start learning on, so we each bought one, plus some roving in various pretty colors. And then when we got home last night, we gave it a go, with the help of some youtube instructional videos. It was a little hard at first, but eventually we both got the hang of it. I’ll write another blog post with pictures of my learning yarn as soon as I charge my camera batteries.

I sort of wish I could keep a sheep in my front yard. There were some really cute ones for sale there with a big sign next to them about how they would normally cost you 300 dollars, but their festival price was only 100 dollars. They ran away from me when I tried to pet them, though.

I got just wool, in three different greenish colors. I’m glad I started with wool, too, because L got some wool-tencel blend, and it seemed a lot harder to spin. But when I become an expert, I shall want to spin all kinds of fluff!